HYDRAULICS ISSUE ON STRONGBACK CAUSES SCRUB OF CREW-10 LAUNCH - NASA and SpaceX were less than an hour away from the launch of a new four crew to the International Space Station on Wednesday evening when a hydraulics issue caused a mission scrub. The flight is needed to relieve the station’s current crew, including the two astronauts who originally launched on... More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 13)
ASTRONAUTS LAUNCHING TO SPACE WILL FINALLY RELIEVE THE PAIR WHO FLEW ON BOEING'S TROUBLED CAPSULE - Four astronauts are gearing up to launch to the International Space Station on Wednesday. Their arrival will, at long last, kick off the process of bringing NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore home to Earth. Williams and Wilmore have been the focus of public attention since they launc... More (Source: NBC News - Mar 12)
LONG MARCH 8 LAUNCHES THOUSAND SAILS SATELLITES FROM COMMERCIAL SPACEPORT - A new group of 18 satellites entered orbit Tuesday for the Thousand Sails constellation with the first launch from a new commercial launch pad. A Long March 8 rocket lifted off at 12:38 p.m. Eastern (1638 UTC) March 11 from launch pad 1 of the Hainan Commercial Launch Site near Wenchang, Hainan i... More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 12)
CHINA CREATES POWERFUL SPY SATELLITE CAPABLE OF SEEING FACIAL DETAILS FROM LOW ORBIT - Scientists in China have created a satellite with laser-imaging technology powerful enough to capture human facial details from more than 60 miles (100 kilometers) away. This breakthrough represents a performance increase of 100 times or more compared to leading spy cameras and traditional telesc... More (Source: Live Science - Mar 12)
STUDY: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL REDUCE THE NUMBER OF SATELLITES THAT CAN SAFELY ORBIT IN SPACE - MIT aerospace engineers have found that greenhouse gas emissions are changing the environment of near-Earth space in ways that, over time, will reduce the number of satellites that can sustainably operate there. In a study appearing today in Nature Sustainability, the researchers report that carb... More (Source: MIT News - Mar 11)
SWISSTO12 TO BUILD SMALL ASIA-FOCUSED DIRECT-TO-DEVICE GEO SATELLITE - Singapore’s Astrum Mobile has ordered a small satellite from Swissto12 to deliver resilient, low-bandwidth multimedia and connectivity services directly to devices across Asia from geostationary orbit (GEO). Announcing its third customer for the HummingSat platform March 10, Switzerland-based S... More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 11)
SPACEX SCRUBS LAUNCH OF TWO NASA SATELLITE MISSIONS - Two NASA missions will have to wait longer for a launch aboard a single rocket. Both aim to unravel mysteries about the universe — one by peering far from Earth, the other by looking closer to home. SpaceX on Saturday night announced on the social platform X about two hours before the scheduled... More (Source: The Japan Times - Mar 10)
SUCCESSFUL LAUNCH OF NORWAY’S NEW SATELLITE - During the night leading into Wednesday, the control room established contact with the satellite, and everything looks good. The launch was carried out by SpaceX using a Falcon-9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Transport-12 mission carried several small satellites of va... More (Source: SatNews - Mar 10)
CHINA EXPANDS SECRETIVE SATELLITE SERIES WITH LAUNCH OF TJS-15 - China launched the latest in a series classified satellites into geosynchronous transfer orbit Sunday while disclosing little about the spacecraft. A Long March 3B rocket lifted off at 12:17 p.m. Eastern (1717 UTC) March 9 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, southwest China. The China Aeros... More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 10)
FOR NASA ASTRONAUTS ON A 10-DAY SPACE MISSION THAT LASTED 9 MONTHS, A LANDING DATE AT LAST - Two NASA astronauts who launched on a short mission to the International Space Station last year that turned into a 10-month marathon finally know when they'll be coming home. The Boeing Starliner astronauts, who launched on the spacecraft's Crewed Flight Test on June 5, have been living aboard t... More (Source: Space.com - Mar 10)
NASA LAUNCH OF SPHEREX AND PUNCH SPACE MISSIONS DELAYED - Two NASA missions called "SPHEREx" and "PUNCH" will not be sharing a ride to space this weekend. The agency had planned to launch both missions at the same time on Saturday (March 8) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket; SpaceX is continuing to complete vehicle checkouts, delaying the liftoff. A ne... More (Source: Space.com - Mar 9)
ROCKET LAB UNVEILS PLAN TO LAND NEUTRON ROCKETS AT SEA, 1ST LAUNCH IN 2025 - The private space company Rocket Lab is on track to launch the first of its new reusable Neutron Rocket in the second half of 2025 and will eventually land them at sea, the company revealed. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck shared updates on Neutron during the company’s Feb. 26 earnings ca... More (Source: Space.com - Mar 9)
SPACEX DRAGON CAPSULE ARRIVES AT LAUNCH SITE FOR CREW-10 ASTRONAUT FLIGHT TO ISS - The capsule that will carry the next crew to the International Space Station has reached the SpaceX hangar at the mission's launch pad. The Crew Dragon Endurance will ferry the next set of astronauts to the International Station (ISS). That mission, called Crew-10, is set to launch on a SpaceX Fa... More (Source: Space.com - Mar 8)
X-37B ORBITAL TEST VEHICLE CONCLUDES SEVENTH SUCCESSFUL MISSION - The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle-7 (OTV-7), the U.S. Space Force’s dynamic unmanned spaceplane, successfully deorbited and landed at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, March 7, 2025 at 02:22 a.m. EST. The U.S. Space Force landed the X-37B at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, to exercise... More (Source: United States Space Force - Mar 7)
EUROPE'S ARIANE 6 DEPLOYS SPY SATELLITE IN FIRST FULL MISSION - Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket successfully deployed a French spy satellite in its first fully operational launch on Thursday, completing a return to space for a continent facing questions over its role amid a security rift with the United States. The uncrewed launcher lifted off from Europe's spacep... More (Source: Reuters - Mar 7)
STARSHIP UPPER STAGE LOST IN SECOND MISHAP IN A ROW - SpaceX launched its huge Starship rocket on the program’s eighth test flight Thursday, but a malfunction of some sort triggered multiple upper stage engine shutdowns and for the second flight in a row, the vehicle failed to reach its planned sub-orbital altitude and broke apart in a shower of debr... More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Mar 7)
ISS ASTRONAUTS REJECT CALL FOR EARLY RETIREMENT OF THE STATION - Astronauts on the International Space Station said they disagreed with Elon Musk’s claim that the station was past its prime and should be deorbited in as soon as two years. Speaking to reporters March 4, NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who have been on the station since June o... More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 7)
NASA’S SPACEX CREW-9 SCIENTIFIC MISSION ON SPACE STATION CONCLUDES - NASA’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission with agency astronauts Nick Hague, Butch Wilmore, and Suni Williams, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov is preparing to return to Earth following their science mission aboard the International Space Station. Hague, Williams, and Wilmore completed more than 900 ... More (Source: NASA - Mar 7)
APEX’S FIRST SATELLITE MARKS ONE YEAR IN ORBIT - The first spacecraft built by satellite manufacturing startup Apex continues to work well after a year in orbit as the company leverages that experience for future spacecraft. The Aries SN1 spacecraft launched last March on the SpaceX Transporter-10 rideshare mission. The spacecraft was a demonst... More (Source: SpaceNews - Mar 6)
